System Modeling Techniques to Improve the Ride and Vibration Isolation Characteristics of Heavy Equipment

Much attention has been devoted to the importance of vehicle dynamics relative to human response ride criteria. The present work extends this effort by providing a practical computerized design approach in which the vehicle designer selects a representative terrain input, either sinusoidal or power spectral density, to excite a vehicle model constructed by the modal Building Block method. To evaluate vehicle ride the resulting system response, accounting for human dynamic characteristics, is compared to accepted ride criteria, such as ISO spectra and absorbed power. An example involving an agricultural tractor is presented to illustrate the approach.